A federal jury in Cleveland has convicted three members of the Fully Blooded Felons street gang of racketeering murder, kidnapping, drug trafficking and firearms crimes, the U.S. Department of Justice announced Thursday, November 5. Raven Mullins, 37, Malik Brooks, 28, and Jayon Florence, 23, all of Cleveland, were found guilty after a three-week trial, according to the Justice Department. Cleveland.com also reported the verdicts Thursday.
The Justice Department said the Fully Blooded Felons have operated in Ohio since about 2012, primarily on Cleveland’s east side, with activity in Akron, Youngstown and elsewhere, and are also entrenched in the Ohio prison system. Mullins oversaw the gang’s governing body, known as the “Commission,” which set the enterprise’s rules and decided punishments for members who broke them, according to evidence presented at trial and summarized in the Justice Department’s announcement.
Prosecutors proved at trial that the defendants, with other gang members who earlier pleaded guilty, kidnapped and murdered a woman the gang suspected of being romantically involved with a rival gang member and sharing information with rivals, the Justice Department said. Gang members held her in an apartment on or about July 28, 2022, where Mullins ordered members including Brooks and Florence to repeatedly punch and choke her. The next day, with Mullins’ approval, Brooks and Florence and others drove her to Cleveland’s west side and fatally shot her 19 times, leaving her body in the front seat of a stolen Kia Optima, according to the Justice Department.
The trial evidence also showed that Mullins and other gang members kidnapped and assaulted a 22-year-old woman over several days in the summer of 2022 after she gave a statement to police, and that Mullins and two other gang members robbed and murdered a second victim on Cleveland’s west side on September 12, 2023, the Justice Department said. Prosecutors also presented evidence that Brooks shot two rival gang members on Cleveland’s west side in July 2022, and that searches of two gang stash houses turned up more than 300 grams of fentanyl, cocaine and methamphetamine and seven firearms.
“These verdicts send a clear message: when gang members make it their business to hurt people and terrorize our communities, we make it our business to lock them in a cage far from home,” U.S. Attorney David M. Toepfer for the Northern District of Ohio said in the Justice Department’s announcement. FBI Cleveland Special Agent in Charge Joshua DelManzo said in the same announcement that the Fully Blooded Felons network “has been identified as Cleveland’s most significant gang threat” and that its “reign of terror is over.”
Cleveland Division of Police Chief Dorothy A. Todd said in the Justice Department’s announcement that the convictions bring closure to an extensive investigation and that “our community is safer today because these individuals are being held accountable and are no longer on our streets.”
Each defendant faces a maximum penalty of life in prison, and no sentencing date has been set, the Justice Department said. With these verdicts, 25 Fully Blooded Felon members have now been charged and convicted on federal charges tied to the indictment, including RICO conspiracy, murder in aid of racketeering, kidnapping in aid of racketeering, and firearms and drug offenses. The case grew out of a yearslong investigation by the FBI with assistance from the Cleveland Division of Police, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Cuyahoga County Sheriff’s Office, the Ohio Adult Parole Authority, the Ohio State Highway Patrol, the U.S. Marshals Service and other agencies, according to the Justice Department.